If so, the antique car is the rare treasure not uncovered in a yearlong makeover of the links originally built by storied golf course architect Walter Travis for the Gilded Age tycoons of the Jekyll Island Club.

The once-exclusive course reopens Nov. 1, 97 years after its debut. Now a public course, the renewed Great Dunes showcases much of the same layout once played by the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and America’s other wealthiest families who wintered annually on Jekyll during the club era.

Great Dunes’ original glory was cut short by the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression. The course remained open until the club’s 1942 closure, and play resumed after Georgia turned Jekyll into a state park, but many of the Travis-designed holes and original landscape features were gradually lost to time.

Redevelopment led to the loss of a beachside portion and several holes. Budget and maintenance decisions reshaped the rest.

The “bones” of Travis’ Great Dunes remained in the ground, though, and the course’s restorers, architects Brian Ross and Jeffrey Stein, found them. Those discoveries, along with archival records and photographs, led to a resurrection.

“This project was as much about archaeology as architecture,” Ross said. “It’s not often you take a job not knowing exactly what you’re going to do because you don’t know what you’re going to find.”

Great Dunes reopens as an 18-hole, 7,014-yard course distinguished by its sand dune-littered landscape, frequent osprey, deer and alligator sightings, and sweeping ocean views. The $13.5 million renewal is the centerpiece of a broader overhaul of Jekyll Island State Park’s golf complex, launched in early 2024.

The new Great Dunes, priced at $135 per round, is meant to elevate Jekyll as a golf tourism destination that rivals neighboring St. Simons Island and Sea Island. Jekyll’s other two courses, Pine Lakes and Indian Mounds, still offer rounds at less than $100.

Island leaders — Jekyll is governed and operated by a state authority — expect Great Dunes to boost business at the Jekyll Island Convention Center, which competes for corporate and association conferences. High-quality golf amenities are highly valued by convention bookers and event planners.

The restoration comes on the heels of other efforts to restore the Georgia barrier island’s historic luster. Jekyll’s Pier Road shopping district reopened earlier this year with new retailers and upgraded landscaping. And the state continues to rehab the historic “Millionaire’s Row” cottage mansions of the club era.

The turreted clubhouse, Jekyll’s most recognizable landmark, underwent restoration in 1986 and is now a resort hotel.

Travis’ original 18-hole layout began to wither almost as soon as it debuted because of the club’s Great Depression struggles. The state bought the island in 1947, and golf was not an early priority.

Great Dunes’ beachfront holes held value beyond golf — one of the island’s earliest seaside hotels sits atop an original green — and those holes were bulldozed in 1955, shrinking the course to nine holes.

Travis’ work was further buried in later decades. Greens shrank in size by as much as 75%. Tee boxes were relocated or abandoned. Irrigation system changes altered fairway routings. And brush and trees claimed any undisturbed space.

The architects, Ross and Stein, suspected those features were hidden, not destroyed. As they launched the restoration in fall 2024, they scraped the top layers of soil off Travis’ original track, using historic photos, such as an aerial taken in 1942, as guides.

Several of the Travis holes were just below the surface and required little more restoration work than excavation, new grass, rebuilt sand mounding, bunkers and brush clearing.

“They brought it back from the dead,” said Noel Jensen, who led the golf course project for the Jekyll Island Authority.

The architects instead researched and visited several of the other 50 or so courses Travis designed. A champion player, Travis moonlighted as a links designer and was to golf courses of that time what Valentino is to red carpets today — a sought-after genius who catered to well-heeled clients.

Today his works remain largely the domain of several of America’s most exclusive private clubs — and not the type where members are willing to share their course to host PGA Tour events or major championships. That’s why Travis’ portfolio isn’t as thick or well-known outside of golf diehards as other masters of the day, such as Donald Ross (designer of the famed Pinehurst No. 2), Alister MacKenzie (Augusta National) and A.W. Tillinghast (Winged Foot).

Only four Travis courses other than Great Dunes are currently open to the public: East Potomac Park in Washington; Orchard Park Country Club near Buffalo, New York; Equinox in Manchester Village, Vermont; and Cape Arundel Golf Club in Kennebunkport, Maine. Only Cape Arundel and Great Dunes are along a coastline, where Travis’ skill of melding design features with the natural habitat is most pronounced.

Great Dunes’ makeover artists Ross and Stein labored to ensure Travis’ signature carried over to the holes that weren’t part of the original layout. To stretch Great Dunes from nine holes back to 18 holes, the Jekyll Island Authority closed Oleander, a neighboring course carved from a maritime forest, and divided it into several parts.